Sorting: Same title beginning, shorter title first

[Under the Covers]

I have 3 books as follows (to avoid politics, I've given them more innocuous names):

The Neutrals
The Neutrals & Elections
The Neutrals & The Movement

I would expect them to be, using ascending order, in the order above, but they are not -- the first title above shows up last. Why is this? How can I change it?

I assume someone has asked this before, but I haven't been able to find this answer to this.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Under the Covers

I have 3 books as follows (to avoid politics, I've given them more innocuous names):

The Neutrals
The Neutrals & Elections
The Neutrals & The Movement

I would expect them to be, using ascending order, in the order above, but they are not -- the first title above shows up last. Why is this? How can I change it?

I assume someone has asked this before, but I haven't been able to find this answer to this.

Check the title sort order the books are sorted according to that.

[Under the Covers]

It's set to 'library_order' in the Tweaks -- but that isn't the problem. Except for this one instance, titles sort normally.

Again, books with titles having the same beginning words sort as they should, except for the title containing only the beginning words, which comes up last. I want the longer titles to follow, in ascending alpha order -- the title without the added words on the end should not be at the bottom.

Using my above example, the list currently sorts as follows:

The Neutrals & Elections
The Neutrals & The Movement
The Neutrals

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Under the Covers

I have 3 books as follows (to avoid politics, I've given them more innocuous names):

The Neutrals
The Neutrals & Elections
The Neutrals & The Movement

I would expect them to be, using ascending order, in the order above, but they are not -- the first title above shows up last. Why is this? How can I change it?

I assume someone has asked this before, but I haven't been able to find this answer to this.

The arrow on the column is pointing down (descending). Click the head again (Arrow is now up)

BTW Calibre normally biases sorts by the previous (other) column sorts, so you may need to walk the sequence if you depend on that aspect. before you leave, make sure that columns direction is correct

[Under the Covers]

Yes, the arrow is pointing the right direction, and the same thing happens in reverse (as one would expect) with the arrow pointing the other direction. Thus, when in reverse order, the short title comes first, followed by the other two (in the same but reverse order).

As far as I can tell, all other titles sort the way I would expect -- only the short title of these 3 acts this way.

[theducks]

Open the Metadata editor and look at the title sort block (it should also normally be Green)

If you don't have it. Get it! The Quality check Plugin (preferences:Get Plugins)

It has a huge number of metadata Checks that you can choose from to sort out these type issues

(The rest of the checks are great,, I was just pointing to the most appropriate group in this case)

BTW I just checked. V2.27 W7 x64 using

title:&

The answers in a first words sequence were sorted correctly
You might recalculate those sort values using the Auto create button to the right of the title

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Under the Covers

Yes, the arrow is pointing the right direction, and the same thing happens in reverse (as one would expect) with the arrow pointing the other direction. Thus, when in reverse order, the short title comes first, followed by the other two (in the same but reverse order).

As far as I can tell, all other titles sort the way I would expect -- only the short title of these 3 acts this way.

The problem stems from how calibre changes the title when the sort value is computed for library order. Using your examples, the computed values are:

The Neutrals ==> Neutrals, The
The Neutrals & Elections ==> Neutrals & Elections, The
The Neutrals & The Movement ==> Neutrals & The Movement, The

Note that in the first line, the 's' of Neutrals is followed by a comma, while for the other two that same 's' is followed by a space. When sorting, a space is sorted before a comma, so the first (The Neutrals) is sorted after the third.

Two ways to fix this.

1. Change the sorting from library order to strictly alphabetic (in Tweaks). This will make the titles sort in the right order but will also make "The", etc., significant.
2. Manually change the title sort for "The Neutrals" to be "Neutrals" instead of "Neutrals, The". This will fix the sorting problem, but could have side effects in save templates. And yes, the change will show in red. Ignore it.

I would pick the second option because I cannot deal with titles like "The Neutrals" sorting under "T" instead of "N".

[Under the Covers]

(oops -- duplicate)

[Under the Covers]

Originally Posted by theducks

Open the Metadata editor and look at the title sort block (it should also normally be Green)

If you don't have it. Get it! The Quality check Plugin (preferences:Get Plugins)

It has a huge number of metadata Checks that you can choose from to sort out these type issues

Title sort is green. Quality Check turns up nothing.

[Under the Covers]

@chaley: Ah, thanks for your response! I figured there had to be some rule that I didn't know about. I had seen the strictly alphabetical in Tweaks and didn't want to mess with that, so I agree that your 2nd choice is likely the better one, but not sure I want to change it. Maybe I'm just being obsessive and should let it go....

[Under the Covers]

@chaley: I re-read your response -- changing only the Title Sort, not the actual title, as I haven't set up any Save templates, and it fixes the problem. I don't know why I hadn't tried messing with that, given everything else I tried. Now it's just ignoring the red/pink in the metadata panel.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Under the Covers

@chaley: I re-read your response -- changing only the Title Sort, not the actual title, as I haven't set up any Save templates, and it fixes the problem. I don't know why I hadn't tried messing with that, given everything else I tried. Now it's just ignoring the red/pink in the metadata panel.

Bulk metadata edit has a tick box to recomputed the Title sorts (because you changed the Title sort rule), that will get rid of the red

[Under the Covers]

Originally Posted by theducks

Bulk metadata edit has a tick box to recomputed the Title sorts (because you changed the Title sort rule), that will get rid of the red

It did, but on Calibre restart it reinserted ", The" in the title sort for that book, which undoes the sort correction/exception. If I'm understanding correctly, the rule I changed was just to make an exception for that one book in the Title sort field, so I actually undid that exception by using the bulk metadata Update title sort, right?

[Turtle91]

Kind of an alternate way of sorting FWIW:

You could make sure the metadata has information for what series they are in - pick a name: "Neutrals" or something - and give each book a series index. Then go into tweaks and set your default search order to be: Authors, Series, Title

That way it will sort by author, then each series in proper order, then by alphabetical title.

[Under the Covers]

Good tip . . . and something I finally got around to setting up just a couple of days ago! (Using your exact sort order, even.)